Sir Jeremy took his leave soon after, saying that he had an appointment with the Aberdeenshire police at Balmoral. He’d be taking a room at the inn in Braemar, to be on hand, and I could always leave a message for him there.

“But this is in the hands of the police now,” he added as I escorted him down to the front door. “They’ll take fingerprints and with any luck the right guns will turn up. And we’re putting extra men to guard the members of the royal family.”

I watched him drive away, feeling empty and frightened. I wished that Darcy hadn’t gone. My grandfather was in a cottage nearby but this case was out of his league. He couldn’t barge into Balmoral and find a member of my social set who was trying to kill members of the royal family.

Then I stopped to think about this. Had I witnessed, actually witnessed personally, anyone trying to kill members of the royal family? The tumbling lavatory, the broken rope were not necessarily meant for Prince George. Hugo had possibly been shot quite deliberately because of what he had found out. So who had done something he needed to keep concealed? Of course my thoughts went straight to Paolo. He loved anything risky. He was currently under arrest for running down a helpless servant girl. I remembered how fast he was driving away from Balmoral yesterday. Had he shot Hugo and then gone to Castle Rannoch to retrieve Hugo’s notes before showing up at the boat, as cool as a cucumber?

I went out of the front door and started to walk across the park. A herd of fallow deer stood in dappled shadows. At the sound of my footsteps they looked up and darted away. I watched them bounding away and wondered how it would be if one always had to live on the lookout for predators. I identified with them at this moment. My thoughts moved on, replaying everything that had happened since I came to Scotland. I cringed with embarrassment as I remembered Hugo trying to talk to me. He had tried to get me into the laird’s lug—the one place where we had no chance of being overheard.